Magpiety

from Ron Rosenbaum's inquiry into Bob Dylan's Jewishness

Dylan has been aptly described as a “magpie” who snatches images and allusions from any context, as he happens upon them. And what [Dylan scholar Seth] Rogovoy sees as piety may be mag-piety.

A magpie is "a person who collects things, esp. things of little use or value, or a person who chatters idly." Sounds appropriate for a singer-songwriter whose verbosity sometimes outpaces his coherence.

Seth Rogovoy points to Dylan's Old Testament verbiage as proof of the artist's essential Jewishness. But Rosenbaum knows that Dylan borrows as much from the daily newspaper's trifles as he does from the Jewish bible. He's a "song and dance man" rather than "the voice of a generation."

Bob Dylan employs religious idioms with twangy sprezzatura. "Mag-piety" captures the devil-may-care-ness as well as the determined traditionalism of the songwriter's oeuvre.

No Airs in Central California

from Chuck Klosterman's Pavement profile in GQ

There are no airs in Central California.

The famed band's lead singer denies that his music is a reflection of tension between his aristocratic youth and the disenfranchisement that gripped American culture in the '90s. Steven Malkmus grew up middle-class in Stockton, Calif., a place where folks don't "put on airs."

But it's possible that Malkmus said that none of his peers stand to inherit wealth, i.e. that there are no "heirs" where he's from. The meaning would be pretty much the same either way, even though acting pretentious and writing a will are two mutually exclusive concepts.

Indian Summer for Whitey

from John Higham's Strangers in the Land p. 139

...the declining vitality of native culture contributed to a defensive attitude. Brahmin intellectuals such as [Henry Cabot] Lodge, Henry Adams, and Barrett Wendell knew that the historic culture of New England had entered its "Indian Summer..."

This classic history of nativist ideology exposes many of the ironies of fearful race-based nationalism. On the other hand, early assimilationists don't impress much either, since they assumed that the "tempest-tost masses" had no agency of their own. Even the progressives have large blind spots.

Nativism relies on a vague sort of declinism. Hackneyed phrases like "Indian Summer," the last few hot days in September or October, effectively mask the wrongheadedness of racist ideology. They also suggest a dark-skinned assassin ending the reign of the white man.

Higham took the phrase from Census Monograph No. 7, "Immigrants and Their Children," 1920.